Screen Copy by Fuzzy Lens

The outside is still cold and not much flower, and, I’m not keen to take picture of cut flower = so, just took photo of a flower in my old post screen using very fuzzy Helicoid-B lens.

When I try, I realized that the old screen of XP laptop makes moire pattern, so I changed it to iPad screen. (though, iPad screen makes the color a bit artificial)

Following 4 set of those photos, Left side were the original and the right photos were the screen shot. (All those photos came from Somewhere Net website —– I hope they don’t fuss about the copyright)  (If you Google, you may find the same very easily)

 

Ideally, I should take the original photo myself though, I’m no longer such keen —– (and neither the model herself keen to see dirty old man.  Ha ha ha.  😀 )

I think you may agree, we don’t need to see too much details of the girls.  We are not seeing the woman like an ological specimen.   In certain extent, the beauty of the flower is the same = We only need to feel its atmosphere. (If we go into the details of the flower, often they are rather grotesque. —– after all,  flower is the sexual organ of the plant. —– or, am I a sexcist ?)

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Maple flowers

Maple tree outside (said to be Oregon Maple though, I’m not sure) is having flowers.

They don’t looks like flowers still, they must be.  As they produce the two-winged seed later.   And it seems they can pollinate themselves (or blown by the wind ?) as I don’t see any insect around.  —– There are many forms of life. (not only cherry is the flower.   😀

(Those photos were taken by Tamron 500 mm F8 mirror lens though, as it was done through the dusty double grazed window, the image was not sharp at all.)

Two weeks later, how they looks now.  Though, I haven’t necessary been kept watching all the process how their tangled red things changed to this.  Photo above left might be the female flower and the right might be the male — but not sure. (Yes, I was wrong)

You believe or not, the one above photo, the right one was taken by 1000 mm lens.  In fact, a x2 tele-converter was added to Tamron 500 mm lens. = Long time ago I bought this £5 converter as a joke, thinking to make it for a close-up ring by removing the optics.  But now I know, this was not a junk.   With x2 converter, F8 lens become F16, so that on DSLR’s optical view finder it become too dark to focus. (Unless we use live-view on the back screen)   But, mirror-less camera can show the amplified bright image, even focus-peaking is working ! = It’s their biggest advantage.   (still, 1000 mm lens was not suite for hand-held shot.)   😀      (Since I found their dropped flowers, I’ll show you =  You  can see them developing to the full winged seed.)  Then I remember, one of my Zeiss lens for Sony showed AF malfunction (hence, I realized that’s was why it was so cheap) I gave another look. = While making a test shot on manual focus.

The picture here was by Zeiss (Sony) SEL55F18Z (55mm) Aperture was set to F8 (about 1/100 sec, hand held) and to show the enlarged center as well — pretty good isn’t it !  (By the way, Winged Seed pod right was the same pod wrongly appeared as Male, before.  Well nobody is perfect.  😀 ) 

But, it might be too unfair to the other lens.  I did the same test by Micro Nikkor 55 mm F3.5 = this was the lens, the Nikon themselves named that “their best lens ever designed.” (Canon EF gives  no F-setting on Sony (unless use a £100 Sigma adapter)  and the others such as Contax, Pentax, Olympus, etc, I would give sometime another occasion.  😀 )  —– If we use the lens careful enough, and the camera has Hi-res sensor (Nikon D850 has 47.2 Mp / Sony A7R has 32 Mp ) they could produce pretty good image, without using a heavy tele-photo lens. (Just crop the picture.  Forget the “Purist’s brah brah kind”)  Anyway, Net is for harmless / useless info’chat or Joke.  😀

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Andreas Gursky Exhibition

I went an ongoing exhibition of Andreas Gursky in Hayward Gallery with my friend’s family.

The 16 months boy said to have started to walk this week.

For the boy,  it was the first experience to be in a huge space and a slippery floor.  And he seemed to be very much fond of that and enjoying.

Gursky’s huge prints are amazingly sharp and detailed —– I was wondered what size of camera he had used ?  —– Then as I discovered that they were composed from many photos etc, I lost interest.   I rather like to see such work from graphic designers.

 Photo above said to be a landscape of Tokyo though, houses standing next by next without hedges nor the gaps.  Of course, no such place could exists. (Think, how people can access to their door ? — Where is the street ?) = It’s mean, the houses in this photo were stitched-up one by one leaving no gap ! = This IS an utter fake.  Not only that, if his image of Tokyo in its “Reality” was like this, I have to doubt his intelligence. —– You can find the lords of straight photos of Tokyo in the Net, not mention National Geographic kind.   😀

Photography is the art of “I’ve seen it and I captured” —– The primary existence is the subject. Once we started to make-up and project our own image, its became a business of the designer or even a painter, not of a Photographer.

It seemed that Gursky’s interest were immense pile-up or swarms of the subjects, hence putting together and repeating many images, were natural approach though it was the commercial graphic designer’s approach.  Impress and overwhelm the others with “immense amount” were noting but a cheap trick, easy exploitation of the digital editing.

It was the snow outside.   (The Photos here were taken by either Canon fish-eye zoom 8~15mm or homemade Helicoid-B lens on Sony A7R.)

PS :  Next day I read the booklet of the exhibition and realized that Gursky applied all those stitch work / digital manipulation for the “sake of reality” and later, he wanted to have painterly effect blah blah (by taking picture of the Turner’s paintings   :-D) ….. though, very simple answer to him was that his image was not pretty,  but just messy = does anybody want to have his photo on your wall, other than a sake of snob ?   😀

To compose the image, Approach from the pattern is easy, because it can be done in logical thinking.   But esthetic beauty only come from the deep intuitive sense.  So, its easy to see why Gursky resorted with those pattern or repeating expansion in mass.  But it IS not the art, but an industrial production.   ( Or was that cynical Modern Art ?)

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Self — Subconsciousness

With the incredible advancement of the technology, medical science etc, now we are becoming aware what is the Self in totally different aspect. (Though, those stories were based on the net news, Youtube kind = second, third source.  Take this lightly.)

With the forefront study of the monocular biology and the brain science using MRI kind of scanning = observing the activity of the brain, in relation to the internal flora of the bacteria, virus, even the parasite in our guts, are becoming clear. —— Why guts and the brain is linked ? you may say, = those organism in our guts are making many chemicals and those are circulating in our blood and reaching, affecting the brain, and the emotion, even high level decision-making and the behavior pattern.

You might heard the story of the parasite who manipulates the brain of ant to go top of a grass, in order to be eaten by a sheep, then lay their eggs there and it will be spread by the sheep’s droppings then go into the ant again = So, this cycle will be repeated and continues. —– those organisms can produce quite sophisticated chemicals, enzymes which can manipulate even our brain’s thinking and the emotion.  Though, who designed this incredible system is nothing but THE mystery.

Our mood, emotion which affects our thinking, behavior could easily be influenced by those chemicals, brain transmitters, hormones. (Though, we may not know what IS the condition of “Without” = co-havitating bacteria and its chemicals could be the NORM of our existence.) = Remember, “Mitochondria” in our body-cells, they are in fact, just co-havitating foreign organism = we didn’t create them = they got their own DNA !

Long since, we human has been using the term / words, such as Guts Feeling, Intuition etc = we can not clearly know but only vaguely feel the effect, the invisible influence or resulting deep mind, which we call “Subconsciousness” —– IS in reality, a result of the balance of the neuro hormones include the chemicals from those bacteria, parasite, and not much to do with spirituality.  So, true Self could be a product of the bacteria or parasite you are harboring in your guts.  Sound great isn’t it ?    😀

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Canberwell Cherry by Other Lenses

You may think, the camera was rotated but this swirly bokeh was the lens’ own aberration.

Those two were by Helicoid-B lens 

And those two were by G9 lens

Those photos above were by G10 lens

What I don’t like about this camera was, its AWB (White Balance) changes frame to frame.

And those two were by SZ lens

—– The hardest part in those photography was, to sort the photos without mix-up, not mention the trouble to capture them while holding the camera high above the head and shoot by guess-work. (You know, the Photography is a hard work)   😀  

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Camberwell Cherry by NZ Lens

While passing through by bus, I noticed that a Cherry tree in a corner of the Green was in full bloom.  So, I went back there with my camera together with some homemade lenses. 

(In this photo the red cast seemed to be created by the camera’s image processor — may be non genuine lens may not work well with this camera (Sony A7R)

Cherry itself seemed to be a primitive wild cherry, we called Yama-zakura (Mountain Cherry) in Japan, not the well cultivated Kan-zakura (Winter Cherry), nevertheless Cherry flower is the Cherry flower. (May be from the mountain standard, the climate in the town was warm enough to open their flowers.)

(The photo above left was the other tree nearby — this one seems a Plum flower)

The photos in here were taken by the lens called (or, I named) NZ lens.  It was a Nikon Zoom lens which I utilized its front element, and made it as an individual lens. (Works as a 90 mm F1.6 and able to focus down to 45 cm)  Its macro quality was not too bad though, it got a strong aberration and together with its “Fully open” F1.6 aperture (Think, 90 mm F1.6 is pretty big), it’s creates “Fantastic” fuzzy images like those top photos.  They were shot while using 10 mm extension ring.  And this fuzziness IS very unusual = it looks like a halo in the highlight which spread around still, the details and the contrast in highlight was maintained. = I never seen the image like this.   (If you agree with it.  😀 )  

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Star Wars / Jedi = Jidai-geki (時代劇）

What I found a funny story in the net was —– That the film, Star Wars were made to imitate the Japanese Jidai-geki (Period Play = Samurai film) action.   The Director, George Lucas who also a keen collector of the Japanese sword was very much fond of the Japanese Samurai film, hence he created the film for the kids to have a fun like a Samurai comics.  So, instead to shoot laser gun in distance, but make a direct contact battle using Light-sabers like a samurai fight.  And those young warrior wearing Judo uniform was called Jedi, after Jidai-geki.   Darth Vader was designed like a Japanese Samurai armour.     Funny isn’t it.   😀      (Though, to tell you a truth, I never seen those films.)

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Rice Beetle

This is the Rice Beetle I found in the Italian rice after more than 60 years lapse of time.  When I was a child, we were told to pick up and remove the rice beetle from the rice, before the mother cook it.  So, we spread the rice on a news paper and corm it to sort out the beetles.  It was the norm then that the rice was infested by the small beetles, elephant rice beetles.

I don’t remember exactly when its became we no longer needed to look for the insects. Anyhow, when the Co-op rice producer started to fumigate the rice with insecticide gas, the beetles were disappeared from the rice.

Many years ago, when I demonstrated the Japanese cooking to my friend’s family, while seeing me washing the rice, a daughter of the family shouted “Hey mum, he is washing the rice” —– it seemed, that the family has been eating the rice without washing.  Then the Mum started to preach me that the goodness of the rice is in its brown skin and the bran, therefore if we wash the rice, we will lose its remaining goodness etc.  So, I told them the story that there used be a lots of insects in a pack of rice and the reason why they disappeared was because the insecticide fumigation.  To wash off its remaining chemical is far more acute problem than a bit of nutrition. 

To take a photo of this tiny insect, I needed to use x5 magnification.  (Look at its magnified details, I noticed that this carcass got only two pair of legs = its mean the chest and the head was missing. )    Among my homemade macro lenses,  I chose to use the Instamatic Macro and the LED illumination.   Still, it was always the case, improvised Hi-magnification macro is very awkward ( = x5 magnification means the image is 1/25 dark, needs minute minute focus, sensitive to the shake 5 times more etc) — nevertheless it was a fun, especially, this was the record of the very rare encounter = I met this old friend again after 60 years absence.  I was really grad to see that they ARE also surviving somewhere on the earth.  

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Instamatic-304 & its Lens

This Instamatic Camera has been sitting in my junk box rather long time = Because  1) I’m not very keen to disassemble Instamatic as I had hard time to deal with very awkward mechanism (It seemed, Kodak designer was not very smart) on the previous experience.  2) I’ve got too many similar kind of fuzzy lenses already. —– The lens on this camera has no focus adjustment, still it was made long before the Japanese one-time use camera by which omuni-focus lens became common = could mean, either very interesting omuni-focus lens or mediocre lens which rely on the small F-aperture (— when people goes out, it will be a fine day and the camera’s EE control will give a smaller aperture with deep depth of field).—– But, I’m not going to use their EE control = I’ll need to have a focus adjustment. = may need to use a not very smooth focus helicoid recently got from Ebay. —– ?

Anyhow, I disassembled the camera.  Since the camera was using only few screws to build and many parts / panels were glued down = as I anticipated, it was a very awkward hard work. (I wouldn’t recommend you to do this.   😀  )

Then I remembered,”If I need a helicoid”, I got an empty helicoid of the Canon FD lens, of which I took the lens out. (Photo left) From that empty shell, I further removed the FD mount part and the front cosmetic part. (Photo middle)

And put the lens which I’ve taken from the Instamatic-304 camera (Kodar 41mm F8 Lens) into the Canon helicoid on Sony A7R  (Photo right)

The test images of this lens were like those —–

Then, I made a fatal mistake.  After final assembly, in order to clean the lens, ( — I thought, that the white smear on the lens was caused by the plastic putty) so, I used the alcohol to clean the lens though, as this old plastic lens was not made by the today’s optical plastic but by a primitive stirole kind of plastic = the alcohol destroy the lens surface = and the image became like those.

M m m, —– even to a man who fancy the fuzzy images, these were gone too far, not funny at all.

On top of the snowy weather and CH brake down, life is hard and complicated.   Not funny at all.   😀

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Self — Phenomenology

I found a talking post in the Youtube, a TV presenter introducing and discussing the topics in the new book = what he found the interesting point in the book.   In this time, while referring to a book introducing the Phenomenology, the presenter picked up that a person expose real self when the person made a mistake, havoc or failure. (Phenomenology is a study to observe / analyse “What was happened” in such “Event” —– so, this technique has been adapted to the Sociology, Psychology etc)    This TV program has been talking about such as a popular misunderstanding, misconception, etc, = give a second thought or new idea to the many daily topics and even an introduction to the Zen kind.

So, what interesting in the matter of Self = “Self would be exposed when the person encountered a bad event” = this IS the same Phenomenon, the “Selfless” in the Zen, but viewed from the opposite direction.  We or a person IS living Selfless as the human norm.  But when the peace of norm was broken at the event, we may get into a panic, or get angry etc and “go into the emotional response”.  These responses tend to reflect the personality = “Real Self”  (Broken something may be a financial loss, inconvenience to live without, or a loss of the precious memento, even a crisis to lose the job with its responsibility = in any aspects, it was the big shock to the Ego, Greed, Sense of security, even a matter of own survival.  And as those emotion is often beyond the rational control, the person act from the deep subconscious = it’s exposes hidden “Self”.  People may interested in to know their “Real Self” though, when actually faced such own response in the moment of “The Event” it would surprise, or even annoyed the person.)

Imagine a situation, when a USB cable was broken — some might shout “F***”, other may get upset “What a bad luck, why today, Why me” or blame the self “Why I was so careless to pull the cable” otherwise, even started to laugh “What’s a day, how silly”   Or, just go to the spare parts box which has been kept for such event. —– Certainly, they were the reflection of each personality.  = When usual kind of the signal was going into the brain = because of the signal was just usual, those signals were ignored by the emotional region (in the limbic system) therefore the daily task would be carried out as a routine, almost automatically, without any emotion.  So, it was seen as the Selfless in the Zen teachings. (Nevertheless, even in the “Selfless” state, all the brain is still functioning just as normal (hence all the bodily function too) BUT only without the Emotional reaction. = its mean, without Ego, Greed, Envy, Fear etc = all the psych emanated from the Emotional region = therefore the tactical response, proper repair etc to the breakage will be carried out with cool rational thinking.)

Though, in a context of the human life, strangely or NOT strangely, those “Emotional Person” was seen as a “Lovable person” and the Selfless calm person was seen cold. (Because, the people can relate to those emotional person for helping, listening, advising, even despising and teasing.)  Life is complicated and hard.  😀    —– Which type you want to be ?

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